Circular Logic
by TheOtherMaddHatter
Summary: They say that everything that's happened in this last year took place inside my head. They say that none of it was real, that you weren't real. But Sherlock, to me you have always been real, and I need you more than ever. So why, Sherlock, won't you come back for me? -AU: John is Schizophrenic and Sherlock isn't real-


_A fill for this prompt on Tumblr: 5pips. tumblr post/ 25068016522_

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**Circular Logic_  
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_He was lonely because he didn't have any friends._

_He had an imaginary friend because he was lonely. _

_He was lonely because he didn't have any real friends. _

_He had an imaginary friend named Sherlock because he was lonely. _

_He was lonely because all his real friends weren't really real friends. _

_He had an imaginary friend named Sherlock because he was alone. _

Of course, towards the beginning, he didn't quite realize that his new best friend and partner in crime solving -which also wasn't real- was a figment of his own lonely imagination and damaged brain. TBI or Traumatic Brain Injury, they'd called it, when he'd first been brought to the military hospital for his injuries, combined with his rather horrible shoulder wound that not even he had been crazy enough to forget. He'd been in so much pain for what little of it he could actually remember of his stay there, but after a while even that started to fade to the background. Upon release he'd gone back to London, found a horrible little apartment, and settled in low under the radar. He hadn't even told anyone when he'd left, just up and went, not even bothering with formal discharge. Well, that's what everyone said he did, anyways.

That's not what he remembers, oh no. Sure, he'd went to the military bunks for a while, but then he'd met Stamford in the park, and Stamford had introduced him to a rather unusual bloke at St. Bart's Morgue. The man had introduced himself as Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, and then rattled off such an accurate deduction that he might as well have struck John for the blow it dealt. Needing a flatmate indeed. From there he'd moved in with Sherlock almost immediately, going on a series of wacky and dangerous adventures where he'd met all sorts of people. Sherlock's over-protective and nutty government brother Mycroft, the consulting criminal Jim Moriarty, and a Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, along with the DI's insulting and often times idiotic gang of officers. The charming landlady, Mrs. Hudson -though he couldn't remember her first name- along with Molly the mortician, and well, Sherlock himself.

Apparently that's not what really happened.

Apparently none of that ever happened.

Because Mike Stamford had died in a rather awful car incident a few month previous to John's own injury and hospital stay, a rainy night combined with a late lorry making for a fatal combo in the narrow streets out back of Bart's. So he'd never met Stamford in the park, had never gone with him to Bart's to be introduced to Sherlock or Molly or anyone. He'd seen the footage of him wandering around the empty lab alone, talking to himself later, of course, after he'd broken into Bart's... but at the time it had seemed so real, so absolutely real. His therapist had told him that was probably due to the TBI that no one had really seemed to mention much after his release from the hospital, not even her in their brief sessions. Ella had then told him that he'd stopped coming to the sessions once they'd released him from the hospital, that none of those sessions had happened either. John had just disappeared off the grid for well over a year, only being seen every once and a while by the very DI that John thought he knew so well when he loitered around a crime scene.

No one knew who he was.

And those who did know who he was hadn't known where he was.

Harry had come running to the facility where he was at now, Clara happily in tow, sober for well over a year now. Apparently she'd sobered up when she'd been informed that John had been wounded in action in preparation for the responsibilities that would come with her hurt brother. She was the last of his kin, after all, and now it was her turn to actually do her older sister duties. She'd never divorced Clara, and she'd only ever wanted to find him and help. It was just another thing in the long line of falsities that made up his fictional life, he guessed. Now he saw her ever three days when she came to visit him in the secure facility, Clara too, but never Sherlock. Sherlock would never come to him again, Ella explained. John said it was because he'd jumped from St. Bart's roof but Ella said that it was because he'd finally been given the anti-psychotic and medication combo that he clearly needed. The drugs had killed Sherlock, not this imaginary bad guy Jim Moriarty. There had been no bombings, no blog, and no trial.

John had made everything up...along with his best friend.

_He was lonely because he didn't have any friends._

_He had an imaginary friend because he was lonely. _

_He was lonely because he didn't have any real friends. _

_He had an imaginary friend named Sherlock because he was lonely. _

_He was lonely because all his real friends weren't really real friends. _

_He had an imaginary friend named Sherlock because he was alone._


End file.
